Normally, when you design an electronic gadget, you worry about how hot it will get. Automotive-grade components, for example, often have higher allowable temperatures than commercial parts. However, extremely cold environments, such as deep space or the interiors of quantum computers, are also challenging. Researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology believe gallium […]
Solid state batteries, we are told, are the new hot battery technology that will replace lithium-ion batteries. Soon. Not that we haven’t heard that before. One reason it isn’t dominating the market today is that it’s prone to short circuits during charging. [Dr. Yuwei Zhang and others have published a paper detailing why the shorts […]
A lot has been made about a post-quantum computer future in which traditional encryption methods have suddenly been rendered obsolete. With this terrifying idea in mind, it’s reassuring to see some recent pushback to the idea with some factual evidence. In a recent blog post by [Filippo Valsorda] – a cryptography engineer – the point […]
Sometimes, a major discovery is exactly what you were hoping not to find. That’s the case with a team at Penn State who seem to have recently closed the door on any new physics stemming from a longstanding discrepency in the magnetic moment of the muon. It turns out, the model was fine, and we […]
In the ongoing development of cancer immunotherapy, as well as our still developing understanding of the human immune system, there’s always been a bit of massive elephant in the room. The thing about human bodies is that they’re not just human cells, but also consist of trillions of bacteria that mostly live in the intestines. […]
For those who haven’t been following along, [BPS.space] aka [Joe] is on a journey to launch a home-built rocket past the Kármán line where it will officially reach outer space. But one does not simply launch a rocket to outer space on the first try. The process is long and involves not only building a […]
Having molten aluminium interact with atmospheric water forms a source of hydrogen which can be rather problematic if you’re trying to cast aluminium parts. As the molten metal cools down, the dissolved hydrogen is forced out, creating bubbles and other flaws that make aluminium foundries rather upset. While you can inject inert gases to solve […]
You’re probably not going to hang out around Chernobyl any time soon. Still, knowing the conditions there can both satisfy your curiosity and provide scientific value. To that end, [Yury Ilyin] has spent the last couple decades installing homebrew weather stations across the Exclusion Zone for his own interest. The remote weather stations that [Yury] […]
Rare earth materials are a hot button topic these days. They’re important for everything from electric vehicles to defence hardware, they’re valuable, and everyone wishes they had some to dig up in their backyard. Lithium, too, is a commodity nobody can get enough of, with the demand for high-performance batteries grows each year. When a […]
Nuclear batteries are pretty simple devices that are conceptually rather similar to photovoltaic (PV) solar, just using the radiation from a radioisotope rather than solar radiation. It’s also possible to make your own nuclear battery, with [Double M Innovations] putting together a version that uses standard PV cells combined with small tritium vials as radiation […]